The invention relates to an apparatus for the control of elevators in general, and, in particular to the distribution of traffic at a main floor in elevator groups with cars accessible by way of automatically controllable doors and having a group control circuit.
Elevators with control programs for upward peak traffic are typically installed, for instance, in high rise office buildings or other business buildings where it is intended to occupy or fill the building at the start of work in the shortest possible time. As it can be seen, for example, from the U.S. Pat. No. 2,492,010, the cars are readied at the main floor, which in this case is the ground floor, and dispatched at full load or in certain time intervals in the upward direction. After servicing the highest call, the cars return to the main floor, during which travel, depending on the control program, any downward calls are serviced to their full extent in a reduced manner, or not at all. The control program for the upward peak traffic can be triggered by means of traffic monitoring devices, as is known for example from Swiss Pat. No. 342,352.
If, as is generally customary, call buttons are arranged in the cars of the above described elevators, it is assured that the passengers entering at the main floor will reach the inputted destination floor. A group control is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,374,864 in which, however, the desired destination floor can be inputted at the floor of entry. For this purpose, call buttons for all the other floors are arranged at the floors, while no call buttons are provided in the cars. The control for three floors and two elevators works in such a manner that the car destined for a destination floor, on arrival at the entry floor, makes known the destination floor by an optical indicating device in the form of the floor number, so that no passengers enter erroneously who would like to travel to other destination floors. When using such a call inputting technology for elevator groups with control programs for upward peak traffic, difficulties arise in the distribution of traffic at the main floor, especially in buildings with many floors and a large amount of traffic. These difficulties are caused in the assignment of the calls to the cars and the display of corresponding information to the passengers, and for which the last mentioned publication does not offer a solution.
It is therefore, a purpose of the present invention to create a control in which the assignment of the calls to the main floor during the upward peak traffic takes place in such a way, that the passengers waiting at the main floor can recognize rapidly and without effort, even in the case of larger elevator installations and a high amount of traffic, whether calls inputted by them are assigned to an arriving or a departure ready car, or not.